Re-building Flood Damaged Homes in W VA

I promised to tell you a little about our home re-build in West Virginia. You probably know that several towns in W VA suffered terrible floods last spring. A couple weeks ago, some members of the Miami Valley (Ohio)  Disaster Recovery Team went over to lend a hand. Our team is made up of members from a number of area churches and works through UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

If you've never experienced a serious flood, the critical time for saving a home is the first days after the water recedes. Everything that was under water that can't be dried and sanitized has to be thrown away. This includes upholstered furniture, mattresses, rugs, etc. Anything electric, including appliances, are usually ruined. Carpet and a most of types of flooring have to be taken up and discarded, and drywall/sheet rock has to be cut out to above the waterline, otherwise black mold will set in and the house will become uninhabitable.  Sadly, the first step of the recovery appears to destroy more than the flood waters did.

When the rebuild team arrives, we usually find the home looking like this.

Actually, we had just finished laying that plywood sub-floor before I took that picture. 

That nail gun had quite a kick to it. 

After we get the floors in, it's time for the walls.

We got them installed and mudded (seams covered and walls ready for painting).

We did meet some interesting residents but we left each other alone.

Yes, those are little bats. 

Here are the bigger bats.

 

 This is part of the crew that worked that week.

Most of us are retired seniors who aren't ready for the old rocking chair quite yet.

(Before you ask, no I didn't cut off my fingers and stuff them in my pocket.)

I'd like to show you the finished home but I rarely get to see one. We work by the tag team method. A team goes to a house, gets as much work done as they can then goes home, and another team arrives and picks it up from there. Our week was mostly sub-floors and walls. Sometimes the home owner will take it from there if they have the resources to finish it off. One way or the other, our goal is to get people back into their homes. It's a pretty good way to spend a week.

Well dang it, I've done it again. I let the "personal sharing" part of this post get too long so I have to cut the funnies to a minimum.  How about a good joke? 

A painter by the name of Murphy, while not a brilliant scholar, was a gifted portrait artist. Over a short number of years, his fame grew and soon people from all over Ireland were coming to the town of Doolin in County Clare, to get him to paint their likenesses.
 
One day, a beautiful young English woman arrived at his house in a stretch limo and asked if he would paint her in the nude. This being the first time anyone had made such a request he was a bit perturbed, particularly when the woman told him that money was no object; in fact, she was willing to pay up to £10,000.

Not wanting to get into any marital strife, he asked her to wait while he went into the house to confer with Mary, his wife. In a few minutes he returned. "T' would be me pleasure to paint yer portrait, missus," he said. "The wife says it's okay. I'll paint you in the nude all right; but I have to at least leave me socks on, so I have a place to wipe me brushes."

Sounds fair to me.

This picture has nothing to do with this post whatsoever

 but I came across it recently and it cracked me up.

Hey, we've all been there, right?

Oh. 

Sorry.

Maybe I'd better go straight to your "aw".

You know, it's easy to get an "aw" with a little sad face.

Add a tear and it's a sure thing.

But what about this adorable smile?

Come on, you know you said it.

I hope some of you stop by this weekend because this post is getting bumped on Monday. I've got something special coming on that day so please come back.

Have a fantastic weekend.

Puzzler for Today:  

I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it.

  

Hump Day Headlines...and More

Happy Hump Day 

I'm back. Did you miss me? Notice I was gone?

I had an interesting and rewarding time serving with our church's disaster recovery team in Union Beach, New Jersey, but I was blown away by the amount of devastation still waiting for recovery efforts a year and a half after superstorm Sandy. So many people are still without their homes or trying to live in partially repaired houses. Like many people, I'd thought the bulk of the damage had been repaired. The national media goes home and we assume the crisis is over. It isn't. Please give the people who were affected by Sandy your prayers and any support you can.

Now on to our hump day funnies.

Since I mentioned the media, how about some headlines?

Think about it a second.

Wow. They must have been desperate.

Um...duh.

But his head feels fine.

I guess that was a good day to be a nobody.

Here's a joke I heard the other day.

Man on phone to wife: "Honey, don't panic, but I got hit by a car at lunch. Paula brought me to the hospital. They've taken a bunch of X-rays and I've got three broken ribs and a compound fracture in my left leg. I've only got a minute to talk because they're taking me up for a CAT scan to check for bleeding inside my skull but I told them I had to call you."

Wife's response: "Who is Paula?"

This one just seems kinda timely:

Okay, time for your "aw". I defy anyone to look at this picture and not say it. 

Or at least feel it.

You know you did.

That's it for today. Are we there? Over the hump and on the downhill slide to the weekend? I hope so.

Did you have a favorite?

Have a great weekend and I'll see you here next Wednesday (if not at your place before then).

Question of the Day:

If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from?

In Praise of Senior Volunteers

I spent Wednesday gutting a house. It had been severely damaged by a tornado last spring and I'm part of a church-led disaster recovery team that's going to re-build it so the couple who lived there can come home.

As you've probably noticed, I'm a grandmother.  No spring chicken.  But I was by no means the senior member of the work team that went out on Wednesday.  If fact, I think I was one of the younger ones.  Almost everyone there was, if not eligible for Medicare, at least ready for AARP.  We put in ten hours of manual labor, got that house completely stripped and ready to begin re-building on our next trip.

Surprised?

I wasn't.  I worked for the American Red Cross for twenty years.  Although my paid position was a desk job, I had the opportunity to work a number of national disasters.  You know who I was working alongside much of the time?  Yep - a whole lot of seniors. 

That's not to say there weren't plenty of younger volunteers as well. I am in awe of those volunteers who use their annual vacation or even take unpaid leave from their jobs to go to a disaster site and do whatever needs to be done. These people are phenomenal and I salute every one of them.

But seniors get a bad rap sometimes.  They're a drain on the country's resources.  Medicare. Social Security.  (We have the nerve to think we should get back some of that money we've been paying into the system for the last seventy years.)  Hell, NBC even cancelled Harry's Law - not for poor ratings but because the show's viewers were too old.

Are you a fan of statistics? I found a couple.

• Between 2008 and 2010, 18.7 million older adults contributed over 3 billion hours of service.
• Yearly value of this service to the U.S. economy was over $64 billion.
• 52% of seniors volunteer their time to unpaid community service.

 

Is there a point to all this?  Maybe not.  I guess I just wanted to thank all those seniors who have earned the right to kick back and relax but choose instead to rebuild someone's home, work a disaster shelter, feed the hungry, comfort the sick and disdraught, care for the homeless, give underprivleged kids a leg up, try against all odds to protect the environment, etc.   

 

Okay, that's all.  Have a great weekend.  See you on Monday.

 

Friday Bloopers - medical variety:

 

Patient has left white blood cells at another hospital.

 

Rectal examination revealed a normal size thyroid.  (ow!)

Both breasts are equal and reactive to light and accommodation.